


Fractured

by TheGreatCatsby



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universes, Magic and Science, Tesseract, mostly loki and natasha interactions, so some blackfrost at the end
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-22
Updated: 2014-02-22
Packaged: 2018-01-05 14:55:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 16,612
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1095330
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheGreatCatsby/pseuds/TheGreatCatsby
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>With access to one of the most powerful objects in the universe, Loki can do anything, if he knows what he wants to do. But he doesn't, and the process of finding out could ruin him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> So here's a story that I wrote on the train during my long commutes to and from work. And now it's done, so I'm posting it here! I hope you enjoy it!

Underneath the golden halls of Asgard, in a cell lined with white walls, Loki waited. The place was well furnished and an assortment of books sat on the shelves gathering dust. The problem was, he had read the books already. Twice. Some three times. 

Prison wasn’t his style. 

He was bored, and slowly growing more furious at the idea of being kept underground like a dirty secret. This prison was stifling—he could do nothing while confined in a box, nice though it may be. 

So he waited and thought about what it was, exactly, that he wanted outside of the walls of his prison. 

One day, the answer came to him. 

It was a good day for an escape. 

**

In Odin’s wisdom, he had not made the cell magic-proof. Loki was still capable of working sorcery inside the cell. He could not, however, make his magic go through the walls to affect the outside world. A small problem. 

It would have been nearly impossible for Odin to drain Loki of his magic—it was a part of him as much as the blood running through his veins, more deeply ingrained than both his Aesir disguise and his hated Jotun flesh. Take away magic and he would die, senses lost, unable to read the universe and unable to physically function. 

There was one solution. 

Loki sat in the corner of his cell for hours each day, ignoring those who came to him—Thor, every day, Frigga a few times in a week. Loki did not like ignoring Frigga. She was kind, but this was more important. 

He reached out along a thread as thin as the strand of a spider’s web, carefully, in the hopes that this small connection would not snap. After hours of concentration and tireless work, of crawling along this thread, he found what he was looking for; an ethereal blue projecting the very essence of the universe. 

Loki pulled and the thread illuminated, washed with this power. 

He had used the Tesseract to amplify his own powers during his attempt to conquer the Earth, and in doing so had created a link between them. It had almost gone, but now Loki strengthened it until the thread became a passage way, one that he could use. The magic within him swelled, urging to combine with the energies of the Tesseract. 

A throne would suit Loki ill, but power—that suited him just fine. 

He allowed himself to be pulled out of his cell towards the Tesseract and then, when he had it in his grasp, he spirited them both away. 

**

The power of the Tesseract was not blue. It was so much more, invisible to most. Even Loki could not comprehend what the Tesseract was, not completely. It didn’t matter. The Tesseract was like a consciousness and when it whispered to be let in, Loki welcomed it with open arms. 

He felt more aware than he had ever been. He wasn’t just seeing the universe, he was feeling it. The whole of creation, past and present and future coursing through his body and mind. He was a channel for pure power. 

The Tesseract had been in the weapons vault of Asgard, highly guarded and protected by ancient wards of tremendous power. None of this mattered when Loki allowed the Tesseract’s power into him. He simply grabbed it, invisible to guards and magic both, and vanished. 

When he reappeared it was on the bifrost, where the bridged spanned the fall of Asgard’s waters into the void. Loki stood at the edge, watching the water fall and fall and fall and his body leaned further and further, pulled towards the darkness that should have scared him. 

He had seen horrors in the void. The Chitauri were tame compared to the many creatures hidden in that darkness and he was grateful to have landed with them. Nightmares had clawed at him from the nothingness and by the time Loki stopped falling he was a bleeding, mindless wreck. 

In the void there had also been possibilities. He knew them as other universes but had no control over what he saw or experienced, or where he landed. But that was then. 

Now…

Now he had the very essence of the universe in his hands. He could rewrite history if he wished. He would not—he wanted to cultivate that anger towards Odin for lying to him, to Thor for accepting the lie. He needed that anger. And yet the prospect of being able to do such a thing was tempting. 

And he was curious. After all, perhaps though he was a monster, he wasn’t always. If there were different iterations of him, perhaps they led different lives. Perhaps it did not always end in war and breaking. 

Loki would never admit it to himself, but he did want a different life, a change. He wanted to be appreciated, cared for, given the benefit of the truth. He needed these things. He needed to see that it wasn’t impossible. What if-

No. Loki told himself it had everything to do with curiosity and nothing to do with anything else. 

He allowed his eyes to fall shut and his muscles to relax. And then, he pitched forward and fell.


	2. Chapter 2

The universe may be unlimited but the mind is not. 

Loki’s mind could not hold even a fraction of the possibilities the universe had on hand. The Tesseract would overwhelm any wielder given time. 

Loki crashed. 

**

The conversation went like this: one day, over pizza, Clint was recalling how much he hated Loki (“no offense Thor, but really?”) after an attack from a different sorcerer had nearly leveled lower Manhattan. That got them talking about magic and, eventually, about Loki. 

Clint was saying how he had hated Loki and how happy he would be if he never saw another sorcerer again because magic was too damn infuriating.

Thor said, “Loki has escaped from his prison.” 

Each and every one of the Avengers turned to stare at him. 

It wasn’t the best way to break the news, but Thor had come back for that express purpose the day before. And he had waited. And waited. Hearing about Loki finally prompted him to break the news. 

“What,” Natasha said, deadly calm. 

“Fun joke,” Tony said. “Now can we—“

“It is no joke,” Thor told him. “I came here to inform you that Loki has escaped. I confess to having waited too long. I did not want to cause a disturbance-“

“Fuck,” Clint said, pushing away his plate of half-eaten pizza. “Fuck. That.” 

“This is not the only news,” Thor said. 

Bruce rubbed his temples. Steve looked like a Very Concerned Citizen. Tony said, “I’ll break out the booze” and Natasha and Clint looked at each other, then at Thor. 

“Tell us,” Natasha prompted. 

“Yeah,” Clint said, less calm. “Tell us what else could have possibly happened.” 

Bruce stood, muttered, “Tell me later,” to Tony and left, presumably to find tea and a place to be calm for awhile. 

“He took the Tesseract with him,” Thor told them. 

Clint pushed himself away from the counter so fast that his chair clattered to the ground. He ignored it, threw his hands up and shouted, “I’m done” and then stalked out of the room. 

“Shit,” Tony muttered. Then, a bit louder. “Fuck.” 

Steve asked, “Are you sure?” 

Thor nodded sadly. 

Natasha slid off her chair, said, “I’m going to let SHIELD know,” and left as well. 

Predictably, Fury was livid. 

**

“I’ll deal with it,” said Natasha to Clint a few hours later as they sat on the roof of Stark Tower. 

“I don’t need you to deal with shit for me,” Clint told her. “Just—fuck—I don’t want to do this again. He uses the Tesseract to control people. Don’t want it to be me. Or you. Or anyone.” 

Natasha nodded. “If we can solve this peacefully you know we will.” 

Clint scoffed. “There’s nothing peaceful about Loki.” 

“But he loves to talk.” 

Clint’s jaw clenched. He never talked about his time with Loki, what the other man had been like. He’d just wanted to forget. Natasha watched him, knowing he would talk if he wanted and if not, well, he knew she was there. 

“He’s just so fucked up,” Clint said after some time. “Thor thinks he can fix him, but I don’t know what happened. And I don’t want to.” 

Natasha had gotten that distinct impression when talking to Loki herself. 

“I don’t think Thor realizes it,” Clint added. 

“Or maybe he does,” Natasha said. She gave Clint a grim smile. “Which is worse?” 

**

The dreams were always the same. Not dreams—a memory, one Clint buried during the day that came out when he was most vulnerable in sleep. 

They were underground, in that strange labyrinth of rooms and tunnels that Loki called his base of operations. The dampness made Clint feel claustrophobic, the isolation from the world above him made the feeling worse. There was no place he hated more. And he couldn’t do a thing about it. 

The dream-memory started in the same place, always. Clint walked into an empty room looking for (not drawn to, never drawn to) Loki. He found him, sitting in the center of the room, eyes glaring with barely contained fury at nothing, body tense as if ready to lash out. 

Clint cleared his throat.

Loki’s eyes darted to him and Clint’s hair stood on end as a strange charge took to the air, sweeping across the room and putting Clint on edge. It dissipated, and then Loki rose from his seat, hands gripping the scepter like a life-line. 

“We have time” Clint told him, “before our next attack. You sure you want to go through with this?” 

Loki’s eyes narrowed. “Do you doubt me?” he asked, calm. Dangerous. 

“No,” Clint said, carefully, even though he was pretty sure he was incapable of doubting Loki at this point. “But SHIELD and the Avengers are strong.” 

Loki turned away from him. Clint stayed where he was, unsure of what to do. Then, Loki snarled and blasted the opposite wall of the room with a beam of pure blue energy, which left the damp bricks scorched. 

“Crap!” Clint cried. “I didn’t mean—“

Loki turned on him, scepter still raised. “Failure is not an option.” 

“Why not?” Clint asked, his own curiosity for a brief moment overriding the sheen of mind control. 

Loki grinned, false and sharp and when he laughed, it sounded choked. “So many reasons.” 

Clint suddenly found himself in want of a weapon—but for what? To protect? To kill? 

“They will call me a monster,” Loki said. “It is time I am a monster of my own making. Destruction incarnate. I cannot be anything else.” 

The room felt colder. 

“Why are you doing this?” Clint asked. 

Loki took a step closer, his eyes fixed on Clint’s. “Can you imagine being a lie?” he asked, softly. “And then being offered a gift—a chance to make the lie true or false, to do with the lie as you wished. To make your future your own, to free yourself of the chains that have restricted you your entire life. To be given the very essence of possibility.” 

Clint swallowed. He could drown in the intensity of Loki’s gaze and never come out again. His own possibilities floated to the surface of his mind—working in the circus, Natasha lying dead at his feet, a normal family—and he shivered. 

“I would not exchange that gift for the world,” Loki murmured. 

And then he was gone. 

It was a lie. It was not a lie. Clint stood alone in the empty room underground in the lair of a man who ought to be his enemy and thought, “I think I understand.” And he wasn’t sure if this was the influence of Loki on his mind or a thought that was genuinely his. 

The room felt cold and crushing and Clint felt terribly alone.


	3. Chapter 3

Tony had been watching his monitor for the past twenty-four hours with help from Jane Foster, who had been flown to New York and was now sequestered in the lab with him. Neither of them had any intention of stopping. Currently, the only distraction was a certain God of Thunder moping a few feet away. 

After Thor sighed for around the fiftieth time Tony whipped around in his chair and snapped, “What?” 

Thor’s eyes widened in shock at Tony’s anger—even Jane looked a little stunned (or maybe it was just sleep deprivation.) Tony said, “You’ve been upset and it’s ruining the vibe of this lab. What is it?” 

“Aside from the obvious,” Jane added. 

“I’ve been ordered to execute Loki,” Thor said, “or else tortures will be visited upon him when he returns to Asgard.” 

“That’s a catch-22,” Tony said, “except for the fact that Loki’s a criminal.” He didn’t like the idea of torture or the death penalty, but. 

“I don’t want to kill him or send him to torture,” Thor cried. “I want to save him!” 

“From what?” Tony asked. 

“Himself,” Thor said. 

Tony looked at Jane, who turned to Thor and gave him a weak smile that was meant to be encouraging. “I’m sure you can negotiate—“

“Loki has broken the terms of his imprisonment and has stolen Asgard’s most highly guarded artifact,” Thor said. “My father is past the point of negotiation.” 

Tony sighed. “Look, I wish I could make you feel better, but—“

“My brother has hurt you,” Thor concluded. “I know.” 

Tony turned back to his computer. He was kind of hoping that Loki would do something so terrible with his new-found power that Thor would want to kill him. It was a horrible thought, but it would make the situation easier to deal with. 

“I’m sorry,” Jane said. “You can talk to us if you want.” 

You, Tony wanted to say. You’re the girlfriend. But he kept silent. 

“I don’t understand,” Thor told them. “Loki was prone to mischief but never cruelty. There is something broken in him now, and I do not recognize this man who has taken my brother’s place.” 

“What was he like?” Jane asked quietly. 

“Intelligent,” Thor said, “rather like you and Stark. Always striving to seek knowledge, to better his grasp of magic. He had a very sharp wit and could be prone to moods manic and melancholy and occasionally wrathful. But not—not this.” 

“So he knows about magic,” Tony says. “Not just the spells but the theory behind it?” 

“Yes,” Thor said. “He could talk for hours on the subject but magic is not of much interest to those in Asgard.”

Jane raised an eyebrow and Tony cried, “Not of interest? I’d kill for someone to talk my ear off about that! You don’t think—“

“Tony,” Jane said. 

“Loki wouldn’t be interested in teaching us about magic, would he?” 

Thor looked thoughtful, Jane aghast. “Why would he do that?” she asked. “That’s revealing a major asset of his to us—you know SHIELD wouldn’t hesitate to exploit it. Plus, have you seen the way he treats humans?” 

Tony waved the thought away with a hand. “It’s either that or death. Besides, he owes us so much for that alien attack. Think of it as repayment.” 

“That is a novel idea,” Thor murmured. 

“It would be nice,” Jane said, “but would he really go for it? I’d love to learn about magic but I’m sure that doesn’t mean anything to Loki.” 

“With my luck he’d try to get in my head again,” Tony said. 

“But you would be willing to allow him to stay here if he did this,” Thor said. 

“Hypothetically,” Tony said. “Very hypothetically.” 

“This is wonderful!” Thor cried, jumping up from his chair. “I shall bring coffee to celebrate!” He left and Tony and Jane looked at each other. 

“Did you really just—“ Jane started. 

Tony cut her off. “I know, I got ahead of myself. Sorry. But magic, I mean, that’s a big deal.” 

“SHIELD,” Jane pointed out. 

“Loki,” Tony said. “Other than those two things, not a problem.” 

Jane rubbed her temples and Tony wondered whether or not they were being delusional to believe this could work. Especially Thor. 

“Loki won’t go for it,” Jane said. “He hates us. He threw you out a window.” 

“I hadn’t forgotten,” Tony said. He glanced at the monitors, still very silent. 

“Thor felt it necessary to send me away during Loki’s attack,” Jane added, “which means he thought Loki would attack me. So Loki doesn’t like me, either, I think it’s safe to say.” 

“I bet he’d lie about the magic stuff,” Tony said. “Tell us shit that’s not true because we don’t actually know anything. He’d get off on that, too.” 

“Yeah.” 

“The question is, now that Thor’s got this idea in his head, do we stop him?” 

Jane frowned. “I mean, if it worked…” 

“It would be awesome,” Tony finished. “Imagine what we could do with that information. And we’d be the first-“

“I could figure out how the bifrost actually works,” Jane said. “Less guessing. I’d have someone who probably knows.” 

They looked at each other again. Both recognized the glint of excitement in the other’s eyes. 

“We don’t talk about it until it becomes an issue,” Tony decided. Jane nodded and they turned back to the monitors. 

Of Loki, there was still no sign.


	4. Chapter 4

Ideally, Thor would have been the first one to confront Loki once he appeared on Earth. 

Ideally. 

In reality, when Tony and Jane sounded the alarm almost two months after Thor told them of Loki’s escape, it was Natasha who was closest to the location of the energy spike. 

Natasha was on a visit to the SHIELD base in New Mexico when she received a call from Jane and Tony and she and a team of agents drove out into the desert. The ride was quiet, no one wanting to speculate on what they might find. 

If there had been a portal similar to the bifrost, it had cleared by the time Natasha and her team arrived. Instead she noticed a crater in the ground, smoke rising in tendrils. The agents parked their cars a good distance away and Natasha drew her gun and walked over to take a look. 

When she reached the edge of the crater she saw something a bit unexpected—Loki, sitting in the very center of the depression in the ground, smoking just as much as the surrounding dirt. Slowly, weapon trained on Loki the whole time, Natasha descended into the crater. Loki seemed to ignore her, staring straight ahead. Were he not a war criminal sitting in the center of a smoking crater in the middle of the desert, Natasha might have thought he was meditating. 

“Loki,” she said, the name sharp like a whip on her tongue. 

Loki’s gaze snapped up to her, as if he were just noticing she was there. His eyes were sunken, his face sharper than before. He was a knife-edge. But he wore no expression. 

As unsettling as this was, this wasn’t the problem. 

The problem was Loki’s eyes, glowing an ethereal blue. They seemed to see Natasha and at the same time see more than Natasha, see beyond her. It was different than the blue of Clint’s and Selvig’s eyes under mind control, unnatural though it was. Loki’s eyes seemed to be made of blue smoke, or mist, and the color swirled endlessly and looking at them, Natasha could get lost trying to figure out whether the color was solid or forever changing, and what lay in the depths beyond the transient surface. 

“Agent Romanov,” one of the agents called from the lip of the crater. 

Natasha blinked. Her heart beat far too fast in her chest. She could not say how long she had stared at Loki—too long. She blinked again and Loki did not react in any way to their staring match. 

She cleared her throat. “I am placing you under SHIELD custody,” she told him, producing a pair of cuffs Thor had provided, carved with runes that prevented the wearer from using magic. “You will be taken back to Asgard, where you will face the appropriate punishment.” 

Loki did not respond but his eyes followed her movements as she secured the cuffs around his thin wrists. He stood when she was finished, and uneasily Natasha noted that his eyes had not lost their strange quality. 

She led him to one of the vehicles and sat with him in the back, gun at the ready. Loki watched her and a grin slowly spread across his face. 

“You could be a monster,” he said, voice hoarse. 

“What are you talking about?” Natasha asked. 

“The hawk has given you a wonderful gift,” Loki said. “These monsters are now saviors.” 

“Why are you saying this?” 

“You are a terrifying creature,” Loki murmured, eyes sliding shut as if he were blocking out the present to recall a memory. “Not as terrifying as you have been, or could be. I have seen you bathe in so much blood.” 

Natasha suppressed a shiver. “Those days are over.” 

“Here,” Loki said. 

“Here?” Natasha repeated. 

But Loki would not speak for the remainder of the journey, his eyes kept closed against his surroundings. 

**

The cell at SHIELD had one glass panel, thick and proofed against any sort of attack the builders could conceive of, and three concrete walls of equal strength. Natasha stood facing the glass, Fury off to one side. Loki stood in the cell, watching them. 

“Thor has returned to Asgard to determine your fate,” Fury said. “It will probably be death.” 

“Thor could not kill me,” Loki said, “and neither can the Allfather.” 

“Why not?” Fury asked. “You suddenly invincible?” 

Loki made a noise a bit like a laugh but otherwise didn’t respond. 

“Another question,” Natasha said. “You have the Tesseract. Where is it?” 

“One cannot have the Tesseract,” Loki said. 

“Well, it looks like you do,” Fury said. “What are you doing with it?” 

“It has shown me so much,” Loki said, “and in return I have restored the balance of this universe. The time for ending is not now, and I have ensured that it does not come sooner than needed.” 

Fury scoffed. “Bull-shit. If anyone’s gonna end the universe early it’s you.” 

Loki gave him a strange smile. “Not here. Not yet.” 

“What’s wrong with your eyes?” Natasha asked. 

Fury gave her a look. “This is more important than the question of the Tesseract’s location?” 

“You have the capacity for such evil,” Loki said. 

Natasha ignored him. “Have you looked? It is important.” 

“Ever observant,” Loki said. “There is nothing amiss. I can see.” 

“Couldn’t you always?” Natasha asked. 

Loki shook his head. “I was blinded by lies and hope and sentiment. No more. The curtain has been pulled back and there are no more illusions.” 

“The God of Lies talking about truths,” Fury said. “Why don’t I buy that?” 

“You think yourself in control,” Loki said, “but you control nothing.” 

“And you do?” Natasha asked. 

Loki smirked and stepped forward. “No,” he said. “Yet I can see what does. Come here.” 

Natasha stepped up to the glass. On the other side, Loki did the same. She held her gun at waist-level. Loki saw it and tilted his head, almost like a silent question. Fury also had his gun out. 

“I don’t trust you,” Natasha explained. Loki’s cuffs disappeared. Fury shouted but Natasha remained calm, only raising an eyebrow. SHIELD would have to talk to Thor about that. Right now, however, she was curious as to what Loki meant to do, even if it was a dangerous gamble. 

Loki put his hand on the glass. “Do this,” he said. 

Natasha mirrored Loki, her hand opposite his. 

“Now,” Loki breathed, “this is control.” 

At first, Natasha didn’t notice a change. Her hand felt strange, as if she wasn’t pressing her palm up against glass but rather against water.And then that, too, changed, when she felt her hand pressed up against another, cooler hand. 

She looked up at Loki’s face, but his gaze seemed far away. 

The glass had vanished. She was hand-to-hand with a dangerous, vengeful god who had dissolved the barrier between them as if it were nothing. 

It seemed as if this was a number of long moments, but in fact only a few seconds’ pause took place before Natasha pulled the trigger on her gun. 

Loki disappeared as the bullet left the barrel. 

Fury started yelling for backup, but Natasha could only think about Loki’s face in the split second before he’d disappeared. He’d given her a look of such knowing that it shook her to the core. 

Something had happened. Something had changed him. No—something had taken hold of him. 

And it had the potential to make him even more dangerous than before. 

As SHIELD agents made sure the base was secured, Natasha prepared to return to New York.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's some violence with a knife, if you don't like that sort of thing. Otherwise, enjoy!

“This is mine,” Loki said. 

He stood in the middle of a dark Central Park, night pressing in on all sides, strange for a city with so much light. 

Something curled within him, urging him to hundreds of things. Loki found the urge that belonged to him and grasped it, trying not to drown in the others. 

A whisper in his mind, and an intangible voice told him to make himself in this universe. 

Loki knew many things, but he did not now how to do this, and he did not know this version of himself. Not as well as the others. 

Loki wanted to scream, but the all-knowing artifact of great knowledge and power remained silent on the subject of Loki himself. It practically screamed knowledge of everything else, but in this one thing Loki felt a gaping hole in his mind. 

He began to pace as the urging grew stronger, but with no direction. Few people saw him, and those that did took him for one of the strange people who roamed the park at night. 

He needed an anchor. His mind was adrift with so much else that he feared he’d lost himself and didn’t know how to remedy the situation. 

He thought about Thor. Reliable Thor, who had always loved him, who was always so good. 

No—he had spent his whole life in Thor’s shadow. He had to do this without him. 

He could feel the clock racing forwards. 

**

At Stark Tower, tension reigned. Clint had gathered his most lethal, damaging arrows. Jane was insistent that everyone should remain calm because Asgard’s gatekeeper would surely inform Thor of the situation on Earth. This reminded Tony of the suggestion he and Jane had inadvertently made to Thor about Loki, and he had told the other Avengers that this was why Thor had returned to Asgard. It wasn’t taken well, and most of them wanted Tony to refuse the plan even if Odin ended up approving it. 

Natasha hoped for Tony’s sake that Odin did refuse. If he didn’t, she could appreciate how difficult it would be for both Tony and Jane to go back on their (admittedly not all that serious) deal, especially because Thor would be devastated. After all, the alternatives for Loki were bleak, possibly even cruel. 

And this was not factoring in Loki’s newfound strangeness, the otherworldly appearance of his eyes. And his words made no sense. He had shown Natasha and Fury how much control over him they lacked, but Natasha felt that this wasn’t the whole message. Loki seemed to have been showing her more. 

It bothered her that he had this power, that he was different this time around, almost more than it bothered her that he had the Tesseract. She could predict him before. Now she had to rearrange her views on him, figure out his motive, if there was one. Figure out if he was sinking deeper into his madness or coming out of it. 

He told her that she could be a monster. It was different than last time, not an attack on her, but almost a commentary on a different but related person. 

Clint noticed, as he always did. He said, “Don’t worry, Nat. I’ve got several arrows with his name on them.” 

“Not if I shoot him first,” Natasha replied. 

The next morning over coffee Natasha said, “I don’t think we can kill him,” 

Clint’s hands jerked and he spilled coffee onto the counter. “What?” 

“Not until Thor gives us the go=ahead.” 

“Right.” Clint sighed. “I’m tired of politics. I just wanna shoot and be done with it.” 

Natasha took a sip of her drink, concentrating on the warmth. “He was different.” 

“What do you mean?” Clint asked. 

“Consumed,” Natasha said. 

“With hate and evil?” Clint suggested. “Because that was him last time.” 

“No,” said Natasha. “I don’t know. You do realize that if Odin lets Thor decide Loki’s fate, Tony and Jane might have to refuse.” 

“Why wouldn’t they?” Clint asked sharply. 

“Science,” Natasha said. “And, we need Thor’s friendship. He’s valuable. If they refuse in that situation we stand to lose him.”

“I like Thor,” Clint said, “but that is a high fucking price to pay for keeping him around.” 

“I know.” 

“I’m worried that Loki’s gonna disappear again,” Clint added, “and he’ll catch us off-guard when he decides to grace us with his presence. The bastard.” 

“There are really no good outcomes,” Natasha said. 

Clint glared into his coffee cup. “No. No there aren’t.” And then he muttered, “Fuck.” 

**

Natasha opened her eyes. 

She was in her room in Stark Tower. In her bed. It was still dark and silent. 

Yet, she had woken up. Not from a dream. She felt tense, hyper-aware, an instinct forged by years of training and experience. She slid a hand under her pillow, grasping the handle of a sharp knife. She looked around the room and her eyes settled on a dark shadow near the window—

No, not a shadow. What she thought was a shadow became a tall, thin figure and from the darkness his features emerged like he was surfacing from deep underwater. And then he was solid and in front of her, just feet away. 

No alarms sounded. Natasha held no illusions that they would. 

“Loki,” she said. 

“Romanov,” Loki answered. 

“Thor hasn’t returned,” Natasha told him, “but when he does, you’re done.” 

“I am not here to talk to Thor,” Loki said. “Furthermore, Thor isn’t coming back until I deem it necessary.” 

“You don’t control the bifrost,” Natasha said. “He’ll be here.” 

“I didn’t control the bifrost,” Loki corrected her softly. His eyes looked overly bright. 

“What, and you do now?” Natasha asked. “I didn’t think you had that type of power.” 

“I didn’t,” Loki said. “I have gained power.” 

“The Tesseract,” Natasha said. “That’s how you’re using it, to increase your own powers.” 

Loki grinned. 

“You weren’t this powerful last time,” Natasha pointed out. “Why not?” She gripped her knife tighter. “Was it because it was being used with Selvig’s tech?” 

“Selvig’s technology was designed to channel the energy of the Tesseract into a singular task,” Loki told her. “The scepter was but a taste of that, suited to a different task.” 

“Mind control,” Natasha murmured. “Is that what you want now? To enslave us all? Is that why you’re keeping Thor in Asgard?” 

“I am not here to repeat the past,” Loki said. 

“Then why are you here?” Natasha asked. “Not just on Earth, but here, in my bedroom?” 

Loki watched her for a moment, then said, “You were the worst of them all.” 

Natasha felt cold. “The worst of who?” 

“Your Avengers. And then you were their equal. You are so many possibilities in one. But who are you really?” 

“Why do you want to know?” Natasha asked. 

“How do you choose?” Loki countered. 

“I know who I am,” Natasha said. 

Loki’s eyes flashed. “Let me see,” he hissed, and he moved forward. 

At the same time Natasha moved towards him and sank her knife into his stomach. She could feel his blood, strangely lukewarm, coating her hand. 

Then he stumbled forward with a startled gasp and she kept him somewhat upright with her other hand. She didn’t remove the knife. 

Loki laughed thickly. “A wound not meant to kill?” he murmured. 

Natasha slid the knife upwards and felt more blood gush onto her hand, felt Loki shudder and heard his sharp intake of breath. “Not my job,” she said. “But there are many ways to punish someone without killing them.” 

“You’d know them all,” Loki sighed, prompting Natasha to pull the knife further up, then push deeper. 

“I can gut you,” she said, “play around with your organs and I’m sure you’d live through it all.” 

“You would need to come up with a different way to kill me,” Loki said. 

Natasha didn’t move, considering her options. She could do so much with this knife in her hands. But why? Loki could leave any time he wanted to. On some level he welcomed this. 

She removed the knife and pushed Loki back—he stumbled, one hand clutching at the large wound in his stomach, and then managed to fall into a sitting position on the floor. 

“Why are you trying to antagonize me?” Natasha asked him. 

Loki coughed, blood staining his lips a vivid red. “To see what you would do,” he managed. 

Natasha stared at him. 

Then, over Loki’s wound, a flash of blue light, and when he moved his hand it was as if the injury had never existed. Even his leathers appeared untouched. Loki sighed and pushed himself off the floor. 

Natasha held his gaze. 

Loki said, “I can wipe your ledger clean.” And he vanished. 

Natasha’s mind buzzed—what did that mean? How? She looked at her hands, at the floor, expecting to see blood stains, but there was no blood. 

She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. When she opened them, she called out, “Jarvis?” 

Jarvis did not answer. 

And her knife had disappeared.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Playing fast-and-loose with the Tesseract from here on out.

Without Jarvis active, locating Tony was an exercise in guesswork. Natasha checked the labs first, where Tony and Jane had been spending most of their time. Surprisingly, the labs were empty. Natasha next checked Tony’s private rooms, where she found Tony sprawled on his bed, fast asleep. 

She leaned over the bed and shook him. He frowned, mumbled something, and tried to roll away but Natasha gripped his shoulder tightly until he was forced to open his eyes and acknowledge her. 

“Natasha?” he mumbled. 

“We have a situation,” she told him. He still looked three seconds away from falling asleep again so she added, “Jarvis is down.” 

Tony sat up, suddenly awake. “Jarvis, lights,” he said, but the lights stayed off. “Fuck! How—“

“Loki,” Natasha answered. “Wake the others. Meet me at the bar. I’ll get Clint and Bruce.” 

“We’re drinking?” Tony asked. “And Loki? What—“

“I’ll explain,” Natasha said. “First we get everyone together. Move.” 

Tony got out of bed and Natasha spent the next ten minutes waking up Clint, who was sleeping with his arrows, and Bruce, who was sleeping with a book. A few minutes after they arrived, Tony arrived with Steve, Jane, and Pepper. They gathered around the bar and Tony went to pour drinks, but Natasha swatted his hand away from the bottle. 

“Loki came to see me just a short while ago,” she explained. “He took Jarvis offline and claimed he has the power to keep Thor trapped in Asgard.” 

“He controls the bifrost?” Jane asked. “That shouldn’t be the case. One person can’t—“

“Apparently he can,” Natasha said, “but we have no way of confirming it. I stabbed him, to subdue him, but he healed the wound and vanished.” 

“It sounds like you talked to him,” Bruce said. “Any idea what his plan is?” 

Natasha leaned against the bar. “He was testing me,” she said. “Tried to get me to kill him. I don’t know beyond that.” 

“But he has the Tesseract,” Steve said. “We still don’t know much about it or what he can do with it.” 

Natasha frowned. “He said he could erase the red in my ledger.” 

Everyone was silent. Then Clint asked, “Why would he say that?” 

“With a power like the Tesseract, maybe he can,” Jane said. She looked worried. “The Tesseract is the most powerful known artifact in the universe. It’s been implied that it’s connected to the fabric of reality in some way, but we can’t definitively prove it.” 

“So what,” Clint said, “he can go back and make it so that the stuff Nat did never happened?” 

“He can play with time,” Bruce said. “Maybe. Apparently. He could be bluffing, or it could be a genuine threat.” 

“Are we sure no one wants a drink?” Tony asked. Natasha shot him a look of disapproval. 

“We wouldn’t even notice,” Jane said. “If he can do it, and if the Tesseract can make the process go smoothly. There are many theories of time travel and we don’t know which one, if any, is true.” 

“Are we his lab rats?” Clint asked. 

Pepper, who up until now had remained silent, spoke up. “If he could mess with our lives without us knowing, why did he tell you he could do it?” 

“Good question.” Natasha sighed. “That’s the other thing. It wasn’t so much a threat as—as—“

“An offer?” Pepper supplied. Natasha nodded. 

“Sounds like mind games,” Steve said. “He could be doing it anyway. At any rate, we should focus on what we can control: security and apprehending Loki.” 

“Apparently we can’t control either of those,” Clint mumbled. 

“We’ll do what we can,” Steve told him. “Best case—we get Loki to cooperate.” 

“Worst case, the world ends,” Clint said. 

Tony turned to Pepper. “You should go to Malibu.” 

“I have meetings this week in New York,” Pepper said. “I’m not leaving because of some threats. If that bothered me I’d be gone all the time.” 

“We do get a lot of threats,” Tony admitted, “but—“

“We’ll be fine,” Pepper said. She looked at the others. “Is there anything you need from me?” 

“You have our numbers,” Natasha said. “Stay in contact. Make sure you’re not relying on Jarvis. Be careful.” 

Pepper nodded. “I’ll be making breakfast in Tony’s kitchen if anyone wants it. I doubt we’ll be going back to sleep.” 

“Be there in a few,” Tony said. When Pepper left, his expression darkened, and Natasha could see a flash of fear run across his face before he took a deep breath. “After breakfast—Bruce, I need you monitoring the radar for signs of Loki. Jane, help me see if we can get Jarvis online.” 

Bruce and Jane nodded. Everyone looked wide-awake despite it not being dawn yet. Natasha’s nerves were like live-wires. 

“And if you notice anything strange, say something,” Steve said. 

“You sound like those posters on the subway,” Tony pointed out, but Steve merely gave him a stern look. 

The group dispersed. Natasha watched Clint walk up to the floor-to-ceiling windows that offered an unparalleled view of mid-to-lower Manhattan. She walked up next to him. 

“I don’t think he’s trying to destroy this time,” she said. There had been no mention of an army to go along with the lack of a mention of a plan. 

“Not the only problem,” Clint said. “Last time he messed with my head. Now he’s telling us he can mess with our lives. He could change everything and we wouldn’t even know.” 

“Maybe,” Natasha reminded him. 

Clint glanced at her. “Why’d he go after you?” 

“He was testing me.” 

“You said.” Clint took a deep breath, let it out. One of his hands tapped against the window in steady rhythm. “But why?” 

“I don’t know,” Natasha said. She wanted to tell Clint not to worry, but he would anyway. She was. 

“I want it to be someone else,” Clint said. “I don’t want you to talk to him.” He swallowed. “But at this point you’re most likely to get him to talk.” 

Natasha nodded. She didn’t tell Clint that despite her worries, she was glad, sort of, that it was her. She felt that no one was better at extracting information, at negotiating, at getting under someone else’s skin. 

She would do what needed to be done.


	7. Chapter 7

In an abandoned building in Lower Manhattan, Loki sat on a cold concrete floor and dreamed himself away. 

At the edges of his consciousness he could feel the pull of Stark’s program and the bifrost separately struggling against his hold over them. Loki turned his thoughts away from those for the moment and opened his mind to something far more interesting. 

In that great chaos of the universe he found a thread, and he latched onto it. This was the life of Natasha Romanov, past, present, and future blurred together. To say it was a thread was a metaphor for something far more indescribable. But Loki could examine it all the same. 

In this life, she had changed, but still terrible deeds stained her past. Loki could change this, could manipulate this, and it would be so easy. 

His hold on Natasha’s life vanished, and he instead saw his own past, the child in the temple, abandoned. He saw Odin and Laufey in battle. He saw everything he hated of himself and he felt a burning desire to wish it all away. 

No—he was looking at Romanov’s life, not his own. 

And yet he could, if he wanted, make it so that the assault on Jotunheim with Thor never happened, that he never found out his true heritage and as a result tried to destroy the Frost Giants. Still further, he could have Odin decide to tell him the truth at an earlier age. 

He could make it so that he was born in Asgard, that there was no lie to tell at all, that he truly was a son of the Allfather and Allmother and not a monstrous impostor. 

A rush of anxiety filled Loki—he could feel himself starting to shake. It was easy, so easy, it would fix him, but then would he truly be himself? Was the only way to get rid of the monster inside to compromise his very nature? 

And he would forget. Loathsome though many of his memories were, he did not want to be thrust into another reality with no memory of the old one. 

And yet…

His eyes snapped open, his body was tense, tight, ready to spring into action. He needed—what? To change everything? To stay the same? To forget? 

He took several deep breaths. 

Another test was in order. 

**

Natasha stood watch in Stark Tower—not that she could protect or even see everything and everyone inside the building. But she felt better doing something. 

Outside, the city glowed an orange-yellow color, buildings illuminated against the night sky. There were no stars here, only the blinking lights of antennas and airplanes. 

Natasha blinked, and when she opened her eyes, it was morning. 

She took a step back from the window, stunned, and blinked again, but the early morning sunlight did not disappear. 

“Do you understand now?” a smooth voice asked from behind her. 

Natasha spun around, reached for a weapon—but there was none to reach for. Her hand clenched around air. Loki watched her, head tilted to one side. 

“What is this?” Natasha asked. She had to stay calm. She herself was a weapon—she was not defenseless. “Some sort of dream?” 

“Hardly,” Loki said. “In the space of mere seconds, hours have passed. This is how much control I have.” 

“Why are you showing me this?” Natasha asked. 

Loki took a step forward. “I know of the worst crime you have ever committed.” 

Natasha didn’t think he was lying. She stood her ground, as Loki continued, “You were sent to eliminate a threat at a rival organization, where children not unlike yourself were trained in the art of espionage. You killed them—all of them—as ruthlessly as an animal might kill its prey.” He disappeared. Natasha felt a hand brush her shoulder. She turned, but Loki’s voice came from her other side. “I could change that.” 

“I get it,” Natasha said, closing her eyes. They weren’t much use to her when Loki was playing with illusions, so she tried to listen to where he might be. “You can play with time. But why me?” 

“If anyone should want a clean start, it is you,” Loki said from her right. 

“It’s part of me,” Natasha said. “I can move beyond it, but it makes up a part of who I am now.” 

“You want to be who you are now?” Loki asked, now in front of her. 

Natasha lashed out with a hand and caught Loki’s arm. She opened her eyes and said, “Yes.” 

Loki took a step back; she let him. Something was going on—his eyes showed conflict, fear, even. 

“Oh,” Natasha murmured. “You want to change your life.” 

Loki’s face twisted in rage. “I could erase you from existence,” he snarled. “All of you!” 

“Then do it,” Natasha said. “Not like I would notice. If that’s your play get it over with. But I don’t think it is.” 

“This power is not meant to be idle,” Loki said. “You know nothing.” 

“I know enough.” Natasha smiled. “You don’t change your life by erasing the past. You change it by moving forward.” 

Loki glared at her. His eyes flashed. “You did not always move forward,” he hissed. “What then?” 

“Your choice,” Natasha said. “Not mine. This isn’t really about me.” 

“I could create another reality—“

“I don’t care what you do,” Natasha told him, “but at some point we’ll find a way to make you fix the damage you’ve caused here and in Asgard. You need to restore the bifrost and Stark’s systems. You need to stop playing this game.” 

Loki disappeared. Natasha sighed and noticed that it was still day, and that was perplexing. Time had passed as in a dream. Loki shouldn’t have that power. They needed to get it out of him, or find a way to neutralize it. 

And soon. Before Loki grew too reckless. 

**

“He wants to change his fucked up life, so he’s messing with ours?” Tony asked. “What a little bastard!” 

“The arc reactor’s the only thing that even comes close to the Tesseract,” Jane said. Then she added, some-what off-hand, “What I’d give to be inside Loki’s head right now.” 

Tony frowned at her. “Why?” 

“He’s got the Tesseract’s power running through him somehow,” Jane said. “He can see how the universe works in ways we can’t. You can’t tell me you don’t want to know. He manipulated time and we haven’t figured that out yet.” 

“I wouldn’t start messing with time,” Natasha warned her. 

Jane sighed. “We probably don’t even have the power, but just to know—“

“If it were anyone else,” Tony said. 

To Natasha, Jane asked, “Do you remember the hours he made disappear?” 

Natasha shook her head. “I blinked and it was morning.” 

“Okay.” Jane looked slightly disappointed. “And you don’t see how—“

“Whatever Loki did, it was very smooth,” Natasha told her. 

Jane wrote something down in a notebook. Tony, who worked exclusively with computers, eyed the pen and paper with distrust.

“Maybe we’re thinking too much about this,” he said. “Maybe we just, I don’t know, have to liberally apply arc reactor energy.” 

“To what?” Natasha asked. 

“To Loki,” Tony said. “Create a force-field generating a huge amount of energy to keep him in one place, and hopefully it’ll have some effect on the Tesseract. The thing can’t be invincible.” 

“We hope,” Jane said. “It’ll have to be a strong interference, and it’ll have to be concentrated.” 

Tony turned to Natasha. “He likes you. Say we mock up a device that when turned on creates a field of high levels of arc reactor energy. You willing to use it?” 

“Yes,” Natasha said. 

“You’ll have to be near Loki,” Jane added. “Although given his previous interactions with you, that shouldn’t be a problem.” 

“If it works,” Natasha pointed out. 

Tony rolled his eyes. “It’s Stark Tech. It’ll work.”


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Enjoy!

Jane and Tony worked almost without sleep for three days before presenting Natasha with a device that looked like a fancy watch with a glowing blue core. 

“We have multiples and we’ll be making more,” Tony said. “One lasts 24 hours.” 

Natasha wore it around and waited. Two days later, Loki put in an appearance.

**

Loki opened his eyes, saw the room in front of him, and wondered if he was really there. He took a deep breath and searched out the familiar lives of the Avengers—all was as it had been before. Romanov’s life he was most familiar with, having examined it for his own purposes. 

She had thrown him off. 

How could he move forward? How could she? The horrors never went away, not unless you erased them. He had spent time sifting through different realities in a desperate attempt to stave off being in his own, but the Tesseract had thrust him back and now the power was, as always, urging him to action. He could not rest when the Tesseract wanted to be put to use. 

He could not admit he was exhausted. 

The Tesseract had no body, but Loki did, and it was growing tired, used up, and yet Loki could not let the Tesseract go. Not until he’d done something for himself. That was why he’d taken the Tesseract. It wasn’t using him. He was using it. 

But he still hadn’t made a choice. 

The power running through him protested his latency, made him feel ill. He stood up and swayed. He needed to sleep, but the Tesseract did not rest. It was constantly doing things he usually didn’t think about, but was now aware of, things independent of his wants. Countless events and creations and destructions were set into action. 

A final urging through his blood forced him to action. He teleported to where he could feel Romanov. She made him want to act. 

He had but a moment to see her, in one of the labs in Stark Tower, before the air erupted in a strange web of currents colored blue-white like electricity. He had but a moment to admire the intricacy of it all. 

Then the Tesseract’s power became scattered as it tested the currents, and Loki’s mind scattered with it. 

He didn’t even feel himself fall. 

**

Natasha pressed the button and saw a web of light appear around her and Loki. 

She hoped Stark had tested the thing. 

For a moment, Loki’s eyes widened in awe of the display, and then, his expression turned curious. Natasha’s other hand moved towards her holstered gun, because if this didn’t work—

Loki suddenly gasped and his eyes became filled with a brilliant blue light. He made a strangled noise and crumpled to the ground. 

The lights in Stark Tower flickered. Natasha heard the voice of Jarvis stutter, “Sir, I-I-am detecting-“ and then fall silent. She also heard Tony and Jane, Tony exclaiming”It worked!” and Jane muttering about taking readings. 

Loki had turned onto his side and his body was shaking. 

“Genius,” Tony was saying, “pure genius. Now we have to get the Tesseract—do you think he’ll talk?” 

Loki’s back was to her, but Natasha shook her head. He looked like he was not in a state to talk. 

The air tasted faintly of coconut. 

Then Tony was beside her, taking the device out of her hand and putting it in a small but strong looking container, which he then placed on the floor. Natasha followed him out of the web of light to where Jane was taking readings on one of the computers. 

“Convenient,” Tony said, “that it was in the lab.” 

“I try,” Natasha said drily. 

“This is strange,” Jane said, nose tip almost touching her computer. “Last time you captured him, his temperature was below what we consider normal.” 

Natasha threw Stark a sharp look, because that information was classified. Stark grinned at her and said, “I may have done some hacking.” Natasha rolled her eyes. 

“Anyway,” Jane said, “he’s above normal now.” 

“How much?” Tony asked. He peered over Jane’s shoulder and cried, “Shit!” 

Natasha looked as well—41 degrees Celcius. A high fever in a human, but Loki wasn’t human. He was a Frost Giant, technically. Thor had told them, which explained his normally low temperature. 

“Okay,” said Jane, “we need to do something. I’ll get ice.” 

She left hurriedly and Natasha walked around so that she could face Loki. He was shaking, his eyes wide open and glowing blue, strange light pulsing underneath his pale skin, following the lines of his veins. He was sweating and his teeth were clenched. Natasha knelt a few feet away from him. 

“You need to let it go,” she said. 

Loki let out a breathy giggle and shook harder. 

“It’s killing you,” Natasha said. 

“Turn it off,” Loki rasped. 

“No,” Natasha said. “You know we can’t do that. You’ve made threats. We can’t trust you with this power.” 

“It will find a solution,” Loki told her. 

“And if it does?” Natasha asked. “Does it also kill you in the process?” 

Loki jerked involuntarily and made a pained noise. His breathing was strained, and underneath the blue glow his eyes were darting in all directions, as though trying to see too much at once. 

Jane appeared next to her with ice packs, which she applied to Loki’s shaking body. They kept falling off. She sighed. “Loki—“

“Let it go,” Natasha repeated. 

Loki did not respond.

**

For a long time, punishment had been an attractive idea in terms of revenge for what Loki had done. Now, sitting in the lab with Tony and Jane, listening to the gasps and pained yells and occasional screams Loki made while in the grips of the Tesseract, Natasha felt herself falter. Jane and Tony both looked ill. 

“There has to be a way to get the Tesseract to stop using him,” Jane had said, “or to get him to let go of it.” Half an hour had passed and they had noting except for a bunch of melted ice packs scattered on the floor around an incoherent prisoner. 

They hadn’t even been able to get his attention. Wherever his mind was, it wasn’t here. 

“I wonder what he sees,” Jane said. 

“Definitely not visions of sugar plums,” Tony said. Natasha frowned at him. 

“Why won’t he let it go?” Jane asked. “Is all that power really worth it?” 

“Thor said he was stubborn,” Tony muttered. 

“He wants something from it,” Natasha said, “to make a big change. To us or to himself.” 

“If we figure it out,” Tony said, “I have a storage case ready. In the mean time, I have to see about Jarvis. He was on before.” 

In this manner hours passed, Jane running virtual tests on her computer and Tony trying to coax Jarvis out of his silence and failing, while Natasha watched Loki for any changes. She swore she saw the web of light flicker, but it was a fleeting thought and Loki himself was still a mindless wreck on the floor. 

Tony was annoyed that all of his tech except for Jarvis worked. Jarvis would occasionally spout nonsense like “Strawberry” and “teapot” and “Mark 45” but nothing that made sense. Tony was at his wits’ end. 

Jane simply looked worried, staring at complex graphs and strings of numbers. “Loki knows how this works,” she told Natasha. “I could figure it out but it might take too long. The problem is, he either won’t tell us or, at this point, maybe he can’t.” Then she switched to another graph and added, “His vitals don’t look good. Irregular heartbeat, elevated temperature, not getting enough oxygen.” Another graph popped up. “His brainwaves are a mess.” 

Natasha nodded. Things didn’t look good, as they stood. She wondered if killing Loki would be a viable solution. A few weeks ago she would have considered it long before this point. 

“I can try to work fast,” Jane said, ignoring her previous three days’ lack of sleep, “but I can’t guarantee anything. The best way would be for someone to get through to him.” She gave Natasha an apologetic look. “You’ve had the most luck.” 

“If I can snap him out of whatever this is,” Natasha said. 

“It’s worth looking into,” Jane said. “Tony, come here.” 

Tony left his own computer and went over to Jane’s. Natasha walked over to Loki and knelt in front of him. He was much the same as before. 

“Loki,” she said, waving a hand in front of his eyes. 

He didn’t notice. She reached out to shake his shoulder, but as soon as she made contact she felt a rush of something run up her arm, throwing her backwards. She might have blacked out—her vision disappeared for a moment. It was ten times worse than receiving a static shock, and when she returned to normal Loki had not changed. 

Jane called over to her. “There was just a spike in Tesseract energy.” 

“It reacted to me touching him,” Natasha called back. “I don’t know what happened, but we shouldn’t touch him directly.” 

“We’ll look into it,” Tony said. “That’s new. Are you okay?” 

“Yeah.” Natasha felt a tiny bit of frustration—if she couldn’t touch him, she had to resort to only using her voice, and that would be harder. 

Still, she called Loki’s name several times, loudly. 

No response. 

It seemed Loki was in a horrible dream from which he could not wake. 

Natasha leaned forward, close as she could get without touching him. “You need to make a choice,” she said. “Whatever you’re going to do, Loki, you need to choose now. Your life is on the line.” 

Loki’s eyes focused on her for a moment, but then they darted elsewhere, and he was lost again. 

Natasha had no choice but to keep prompting him. His breathing grew worse, movements more feeble. Tony muttered something about horrible choices and Jane stared resolutely at her equations. 

Eventually, Natasha joined them, having given up on Loki for the time being. 

“I can mock something up,” Tony said, “to disperse high amounts of energy so you can touch him. But it’ll take the night. So in the meantime, a rest?” 

“If he survives,” Natasha said. But she went to her floor, to her kitchen, and made herself a cup of tea. She wasn’t a tea person, but Banner had illuminated her to the calming properties of a freshly brewed warm cup held between the hands and occasionally sipped. And she needed that right now. 

She sat there and thought about Loki. How he wanted to change something. How this wasn’t, strictly speaking, revenge. His threats put her in danger but were not made in retaliation to past actions against him. It was like a test, or an experiment, or a misguided attempt at something. Something Loki had thought was a good idea but had come to see was not, and was having trouble admitting it. 

Natasha did not sleep—she knew her dreams would be filled with the blue of the Tesseract and whatever horrors her mind would think Loki suffered from. She had no idea what he saw, if the things he saw were even horrors at all, but they seemed unsettling. 

She made her way down to the lab a few hours later and found Jane in a chair, watching Loki closely and taking notes. Tony was gone. 

Jane gave Natasha a thin smile and said, “He’ll be up soon. He’s in his workshop.” 

Loki was still on the floor, shivering. “How is he?” Natasha asked. 

“Bad,” Jane said. “We brought Dr. Banner in a few hours ago to see if he could help but this is unprecedented. There’s really nothing he could do.” 

At Banner’s mention Natasha thought about Clint. He knew, as did everyone by now, that Loki was here. She had become so wrapped up in this that she hadn’t even talked to him. Which was, perhaps, a good thing. 

A few minutes later Tony came in with gloves that looked like they were made of silver wires. He held them out to Natasha like a proud child showing off a science project. 

Natasha took them and slipped them on. Inside, they felt like regular, if a little light, gloves. Except they were cold. 

“If these don’t work I’ll battle the Hulk in nothing but my boxers,” Tony said. 

“Please don’t,” Jane muttered. She spun her chair around to face the computer and pulled up her energy readings. 

Natasha walked around to face Loki. His eyes were still open, still glowing, and he was muttering under his breath. His skin looked too pale. 

Natasha knelt down next to him. She couldn’t tell if his words were coherent—he was speaking an unfamiliar language. He didn’t even see her. 

Natasha braced herself and reached out, placing a hand on Loki’s shoulder. 

Nothing happened to her. 

In the background, Tony shouted, “Fuck yeah!” Everyone ignored him. 

Loki shuddered and cried out. Natasha gripped his shoulder hard and took his chin in her other hand, forcing him to at least face her, if not look at her. 

He’d stopped muttering. She could feel him shaking, could hear every one of his ragged breaths. 

Then his eyes focused on her, and he sighed. 

“Let go,” Natasha said. 

“You would appear after, as a balm,” Loki murmured, “and I would cooperate.” 

Then his eyes slipped shut, his whole body shuddered violently and then went slack. Natasha let go of him and noticed something glowing between Loki’s hands. It was the Tesseract, cupped between them, flickering an agitated blue. 

Without hesitating, she grabbed it and yelled, “Stark, the case!” Her gloves felt suddenly too warm. 

Tony got the case, modeled off the one Fury had used, and Natasha slipped the Tesseract inside. A multitude of mechanisms slotted into place and activated, and Tony shut the case and took it away. A moment later he returned and shut off the arc-reactor energy. 

And in the middle of the room Loki remained unconscious.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Enjoy!

It was like losing a sense, an essential part of himself. He was drifting, floating, unable to pick from the fragments where he was or which him he was meant to be. He knew he had done something, and this was the result. 

That was his mind. 

His body felt as though animals had viciously torn it apart in a vain search for something under the skin and now he was left bleeding and exposed. 

“Loki,” someone murmured. A woman. Familiar—or was it in his head? He could turn into a woman, sometimes. Maybe. 

“Loki,” another voice, also a woman, and Loki wanted to open his eyes and see her. But his eyes remained shut. He was afraid of what he might see, or that there would be no women there at all, that he would be alone (in the void) once again. 

Had he thrust himself into the darkness with no hope of exit?

A strange sensation—touch? Something warm on his body, somewhere. Leg—no—hand? Not his, but theirs, touching him somewhere near his head, but not on his head. Perhaps his arm. He felt ill at how much of a struggle it was to piece together what should have been automatic physical information about himself. 

“I have never seen this before,” another voice, male, familiar, like the electricity in the air just before a storm. Loki simultaneously felt himself drawn towards it and repelled. 

“-Time,” one of the women said, the one who was full of possibilities. She said other things, but he couldn’t understand. 

He allowed his concentration to melt away. 

**

Loki was taken into a room that served as a make-shift medical base. Bruce monitored his vitals while Tony and Jane took care of the science parts, and Natasha watched over the group. 

Jarvis had come back online, and not half an hour after Loki’s collapse announced, “Sir, Thor has just arrived via blueberry.” 

“He’s still waking up,” Tony told Jane apologetically. 

No one really wanted to leave, so Tony told Jarvis to tell Thor where he could find them. 

Thor arrived a few minutes later, and he was not happy. Not when he saw Loki, not when he heard about what condition Loki was in, not when they told him what Loki had been doing and how they had captured him. 

“And what happened on your end, anyway?” Jane asked. “Did he really stop the bifrost?” 

Thor nodded. “It would not activate.” 

“Could you tell me what, exactly, went wrong?” Jane asked, at which point she and Thor fell into a very technical conversation, with Jane furiously writing in her notebook the whole time. 

When it looked like they were slowing down, Natasha asked, “Do you know how to fix this?” 

Thor shook his head. “The prolonged effects of the Tesseract on any one being has not been studied,” he said. “What plagues Loki is something I cannot fix.” 

“So we just let him rest and make sure he doesn’t die?” Tony asked. 

Thor sighed. 

“And the Tesseract?” Jane added, almost as if she didn’t want to bring it up. 

“It must be returned,” Thor said. “But not at this moment.” He looked at Loki, unconscious in the hospital bed, and placed a hand on his shoulder. 

No one talked for awhile after that. 

**

Thor didn’t want to sleep. Neither did anyone else—Jane and Tony were too busy trying to figure out what, exactly, had happened and how the Tesseract worked and Bruce and Natasha were on alert in case Loki woke up in a less-than-cooperative mood. 

But he didn’t wake up at all. Not that day and not the next. 

The day after, they started taking shifts and forcing Thor to sleep and eat. Bruce had the first one, followed by Natasha, then Jane at night. 

Jane hadn’t expected anything to happen, but as she was typing up notes on her laptop she heard a groan and looked up. 

Loki’s eyes were open, but he was struggling to focus on her. He’d moved so that he was lying on his side. 

Jane moved her chair closer, putting the computer aside. “You’re awake,” she said.

Loki closed his eyes—tightly—and then drew a shuddering breath. On the exhale, he made a strange sound, like a voiced sigh. He tried again, and this time it was a more deliberate sound. It still took Jane a moment to realize he was saying, “What time?” 

Jane looked at her watch. “3:25 in the morning,” she said. “Can you, um, tell me your name?” This from the tests Banner had asked her to conduct. 

“Loki,” he rasped. 

“Okay.” Jane fumbled around in her pockets and pulled out a small light. “I’m going to ask you to follow this with your eyes without moving your head, okay?” 

She shined the light into Loki’s eyes and he turned his head away. “No—Loki, to me.” He looked at her again but seemed to have trouble focusing on the light. Jane gave up after a few tries. 

“Okay, how about, um, can you close your eyes and touch your nose with your index finger?” 

Loki didn’t react. 

Jane felt at a loss. She had no idea what to do. She tried another of Banner’s questions. “Do you know where you are?” 

After some hesitation, Loki said, “Mid-gard.” 

“Midgard,” Jane repeated. “Earth. Yeah, I’m Jane Foster, by the way. We haven’t officially met.” You tried to destroy my town and world, she did not say. She did add, “What happened?”

Loki struggled to sit up, grimacing. Jane knew his body was weak, and she made to help him. As soon as she touched him, he jerked away and hissed, “No.” 

“Okay,” Jane said, backing away. With a frustrated sigh, Loki tried and failed to push himself up again. 

Jane decided to talk. “I’m studying the Tesseract,” she said, “and how it works and what you did with it. You have answers. Thor wants you to stay with us and help us learn more about things like magic and the Tesseract. Asgard…doesn’t seem to be an option.” 

Loki bared his teeth, a threatening gesture that did not come off as such when he was laying in a hospital bed looking like death. “Good.” 

“One way of looking at it,” Jane said. Loki was still glancing around, disoriented. “I don’t know what you meant to do with the Tesseract.” 

Loki waved a shaking hand in the air. “Change,” he managed. 

“Why did you threaten Natasha?” Jane asked. 

“She’s dripping red,” Loki said. 

Jane felt an unnecessary amount of excitement at Loki speaking in a full sentence, shaky thought it was. The meaning of it was another thing. She wanted, above all, to keep asking him about motives, to give him her equations and see if he could make sense of them. 

But Loki was not well. So instead she said, “You should rest.” 

Loki closed his eyes. Jane noticed that they were now their natural shade of greenish blue.


	10. Chapter 10

“I want to see Loki,” Thor said when he found out that Loki had woken up during the night. 

Natasha gave him a stern look. “He might not be ready to see you,” she said, which was a nice way of suggesting that Loki might not want to see him. 

“He needs-“

“Space,” Natasha cut him off. “That’s part of his issue, isn’t it? You?” Less nice, but effective. 

Thor sighed. “I wish to help.” 

“Then give him time,” Natasha said. “After Bruce is done checking on him, I’ll talk to him, figure out what he’s doing and we’ll go from there.” 

“Let him stay here,” Thor said. 

“I can’t promise that.” 

Bruce entered the kitchen before Thor could respond. He looked grim. “Loki is off,” he said, “like his brain isn’t working properly. He says he can’t see well but his eyes are fine. And his body is weak—he needs to rest.” He directed the next bit at Natasha. “You can talk to him, but don’t push his limits.” 

Natasha nodded and was in Loki’s room within a few minutes. She had a recording device on her—Fury would want to listen to whatever Loki had to say. 

Loki was propped up on pillows, hands twisting something invisible. He was shaking, a little bit, and Natasha did not feel sorry for him. He had tried to change lives, including hers, with that power and this was a consequence. 

Natasha closed the door behind her and headed for the chair adjacent to Loki’s bed, where she sat down next to him. 

Loki glanced at her and then grinned, an unsettling expression. “You are less red,” he said, voice shaky and hoarse. 

“I try,” Natasha said. 

Loki laughed. It came out sounding too harsh, too forced. “So much possibility. And you are this one.” His hand grasped at the air in front of him. “I can’t see them anymore.” 

“Banner said your eyes are fine,” Natasha said. 

Loki’s gaze scittered away. “My eyes are fine,” he repeated. 

“Then what’s wrong?” 

Loki made vague gestures with his hands. He looked over at her again and his eyes narrowed. “Let go,” he said. “You told me to let go.” 

“It was killing you,” Natasha said. 

Loki closed his eyes and took a deep breath. “I am the same.” He sounded upset. “This is your plan.” 

“You didn’t have to listen to me,” Natasha pointed out. 

“You were your own turning point,” Loki said

“You wanted to change my life,” Natasha reminded him. “Make me forget the horrors.” 

“Make them go away,” Loki growled. 

“Not forget, then,” Natasha said. “The point is, you made threats. You tried to play with our lives and that is not okay.” 

The twisting of Loki’s hands was getting distracting. Natasha forced herself to look at his face. His eyes were closed. 

“Thor has orders to take you back to Asgard for your execution,” she told him. 

“Once more into the void,” Loki murmured. “In another time I destroy Asgard.” 

“Not this time?” Natasha asked. 

“I can’t see.” 

“It’s a choice, Loki, not something you can see.” 

“I could,” Loki murmured. “So many things, all except one.” His long fingers weaved in and out of each other. 

“What did you see?” Natasha asked. 

“Red,” Loki said. “Yours, or mine, or anothers’, but always.” 

“There is another option,” Natasha said, “but the problem is we don’t trust you.” 

Loki laughed, small and breathless. 

“If you don’t cooperate,” Natasha continued, “you’ll die.” 

“Threats,” Loki murmured. 

Natasha reached out to touch him and he jerked away. “Do you understand what I’m saying, Loki?” 

“Yes.” 

“Then you need to give us information,” Natasha said. 

“Yes,” Loki repeated. 

“You’ll give it to us?” 

“Thor,” Loki said. 

“You want to see Thor?” 

Loki shook his head. “Keep him away. Always is he present.” 

“And then you’ll give us information?” 

“You guarantee nothing,” Loki said. He opened his eyes, concentrated on Natasha. “Can you? Can you really?” 

“My opinion is an important one,” Natasha said. 

“Banner says I am not well,” Loki told her, “but I return to myself more and more. I may not see but that does not prevent me from thinking. I think you are a liar.” 

“Would you bet your life on it?” Natasha asked. 

Loki didn’t answer. 

**

There had been marked improvement in Loki throughout the day, especially after his discussion with Natasha. Which is why it surprised her when she entered the room that evening and found objects scattered, some broken, on the floor. Loki sat with his legs dangling over the side of the bed, hands gripping tight to the edge, eyes closed and mouthing silent words. 

A beaker flew past Natasha and shattered against the wall. Other objects were throwing themselves through the air. A sheen of sweat had broken out over Loki’s forehead. 

“Loki,” Natasha snapped. 

Loki’s eyes flew open, and they were almost black with how wide his pupils were. He blinked hard and when he re-opened them they were normal. A syringe flew across the room. 

“Loki,” Natasha repeated. 

“It is not the same,” Loki snarled. He twisted a hand in the air and one of the cabinet doors shattered. 

Natasha moved forward and grabbed Loki’s arm. He twisted away from her, shouted at her to let go, but she held fast until all the objects in the room were still and Loki’s shouts had been replaced by labored breathing. 

Natasha glared at Loki. “What was that?” 

Loki gave her an icy look. “It’s not the same,” he repeated. 

“What is?” 

“I cannot manipulate as I once could,” Loki said. “It is weak. Pathetic.” 

“So you can’t control—what? Jarvis?” 

“Time,” Loki said. “Everything. I cannot fix, cannot create, only destroy.” 

“Good for us,” Natasha muttered. 

“I know how,” Loki insisted. “Yet I cannot. I have seen—“ He shuddered, and swallowed. “Let go.” 

Natasha let go and Loki lay on his side, eyes closed. “You shouldn’t have done that,” Natasha said. “You’re still weak.” 

Loki breathlessly laughed, then groaned. “What strength is there compared to the power of the Tesseract?” 

“Something,” Natasha said. “You decided to let it go.” 

“I was weak,” Loki said, but there was little conviction in his tone. “The world seems different now.” 

“I’m sure it does,” Natasha said. 

“You have me at your mercy,” Loki mused. “You could remember your anger and kill me now.” 

The thought had occurred to Natasha, but had gone. She had the opportunity to give Loki the same chance Clint had given her. Clint could insist that her and Loki were not the same. And they weren’t. Just similar. And perhaps, given the chance, Loki could make better choices. 

“I enjoyed it,” Loki continued, sounding strained. “The power. I long for it even now. For the visions and abilities it gave me. The truths it showed me. The truths I could create.” He swallowed again. 

“As it destroyed your body,” Natasha said. 

“A small thing,” Loki murmured, “nothing.”

Natasha frowned, but didn’t comment. Instead she said, “You still have another choice to make.” 

Loki grimaced. 

“Loki,” Natasha prompted. 

Loki curled in on himself and made a choked noise. Sounding both despairing and a bit shocked, he muttered, “I’m going to be sick.” 

Bruce had warned about that. Natasha wished he had also warned her about the outburst of magic, too, but he could only do so much. 

She grabbed a basin and placed it in Loki’s hands. Loki made a frustrated noise and said, “You must enjoy this so.” 

Natasha thought Loki deserved it and told him as much. “You’re lucky I’m not Clint,” she added. 

Loki retched, bringing up bile. Natasha waited while he was sick, then took the basin from him and rinsed it out in the sink. The floor was still covered in the debris of broken objects thrown about by magic. Tony would set one of his robots on cleaning it later. Jarvis had likely already reported it. 

When she returned to Loki, he was watching her in a tired sort of way. 

“There will be no more power,” he said, and he sounded strangely defeated. “This is it.” 

“Yes,” Natasha said. 

Loki closed his eyes and she slipped out of the room.


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So much magic theory.

According to Bruce, Loki remained quiet, except for when he tried to sleep. He would wake up screaming. 

Two days later Natasha finally, after making her report to Fury and getting some rest, found Clint in his apartment. He had left Stark Tower for the time being. 

When he opened the door he looked exhausted. Natasha stepped into the apartment and said, “He might not go back to Asgard.” 

“Do you think I want to hear that?” Clint snapped, walking to the couch and sitting down. He put his head in his hands.

Natasha sat next to him and waited. 

“I know you have to tell me,” Clint finally said, “but would it kill you to say hi first? I haven’t seen you in days.” He sighed. “I’ve been having nightmares.” 

“About the mind control.” 

Clint nodded. “And that I’ll get a call that he’s killed you while you were with him.” 

“He’s a mess,” Natasha said. “Even if Fury agreed to keep Loki here, we might not get anything out of him. He would be a great asset if he wasn’t so messed up. If he didn’t try to sabotage himself at every turn. I’ve never met someone so self-destructive.” 

Clint smirked. “Not even Stark?” 

Natasha rolled her eyes. “Point,” she said. “I need a drink.” 

“I do too,” Clint said. He didn’t move. “If he does stay, I need to get used to the idea. If he stays.” 

“We all do,” Natasha said. 

Clint laughed. “No kidding.” He looked at her. “I have no alcohol.” 

Natasha stared at him. “How?” 

“I’m lazy,” he said. 

Natasha stood up and gestured for him to follow. “Let’s go out,” she said. “We both need it.” 

**

Jane Foster was caught between wanting the information Loki had and wanting Thor to be happy. She had spent much time comforting Thor and distracting him from the fact that Loki refused to see him. Technically, Thor could still walk into Loki’s room if he wanted. He didn’t, out of respect for Loki. But it was hard. Jane hadn’t gone to Loki since he’d woken up, sort of out of solidarity. 

But her curiosity was getting the best of her. She had equations and he needed to see them and she needed to know. 

Eventually she came out and said, “Thor, I’m sorry, but I have to see Loki. I have to know how the Tesseract works.” 

Thor had taken it well, which was good. Jane would have probably held it against him otherwise. 

Bruce was in the room when she arrived. Loki was not restrained, nor did they have a way to prevent him using magic. The only thing holding him there, aside from physical weakness, was the threat of execution from Asgard if he were uncooperative. 

He did look exhausted and ill, but his eyes were more alert, and he watched her as she crossed to his bed. She and Bruce nodded to each other and she sat down, notebook in hand. 

“I don’t know if you remember me,” Jane started. 

“Foster,” Loki interrupted. “If you are here on behalf of Thor, I suggest you leave.” 

Jane frowned. “I’m here on behalf of myself.” 

“Is that so?” 

“Yes,” Jane said. “Last time I saw you, you were a wreck.” 

“Have I angered you?” Loki asked sarcastically. 

“Yes,” Jane said. “For many reasons. I’m sure you know all of them.” She took a deep breath. “That’s not why I’m here. Though I would be happy to yell at you another time.” 

“Please do,” Loki challenged. 

Jane ignored this and opened her notebook to the page she wanted to show Loki. “Guesswork,” she said, “on how you might have used the Tesseract to manipulate time. I haven’t even begun to touch on the other stuff, like the bifrost.” She gave Loki the notebook. “It would be helpful if you told us about what you were using the Tesseract for.” 

Loki’s eyes took in the equations on the paper, and then they widened. He started mouthing words as he scanned the pages, and his hands twitched. Jane swore she saw green sparks of light flashing at Loki’s fingertips. 

Then he looked up at her, and she wrenched her gaze from his hands to his face. “Writing tool,” he said. 

Jane took a pen from her pocket and held it just out of reach. “Use a new page,” she said, “and make notes. Explain. I want to compare what I’ve written with what you write.” 

Loki gave her a sharp nod, looking as though his mind was already universes away. He grasped her pen and flicked to a clean page, where he began writing. 

It was strange how normal Loki looked, at work like this, how like her. He was completely absorbed in the page, as she would be, and was mouthing thoughts and numbers as he wrote, as she would, and the pen flew across the page, only occasionally backtracking. He had leaned over the notebook, but Jane caught glimpses of his work and found it incomprehensible. And as she watched, she wondered for the first time who Loki had been before he’d gone off the deep end. She wondered if this was a remnant of the brother Thor once loved, sharp and smart with a curiosity like hunger for knowledge. 

Here was a man not destroying, but creating, bringing knowledge to light. This was a shock to Jane, who only knew Loki as an agent of destruction. Had he never done that, and only this, she might have liked him. 

It took her a moment to realize Loki was watching her as intently as she was watching him and that he had stopped writing. 

Jane cleared her throat. “That, um, you’re finished.” 

Loki ignored this awkward phrase from Jane. Clutching the now-closed notebook, he said, “This is what it is constantly doing, constantly needing.” 

“The Tesseract?” Jane asked. 

“Yes,” Loki breathed. “I have seen it. I have been able to put these meaningless words to meaning.” His eyes dulled. “Now I lack the power. Only the knowledge remains.” 

“Can I see?” Jane asked. Loki handled her the notebook and she flipped open to his pages. There were four of them, turned inky with words that at first seemed overwhelming, words in an ancient language Jane did not understand. But certain ones repeated themselves, and there was a placement and order to it that Jane’s mind supplied as equations. The last page was a key, of sorts, taking Jane’s numbers and giving them ancient language-word counterparts. 

“These are words,” Jane remarked. “Is that how this works?” 

“Math is a conversion of ancient language,” Loki said. “The ancient language of the universe that we derive our knowledge from. Some are ancient runes, others more modern, and others still only discovered through the Tesseract.” He added, almost as an afterthought, “Magic is turning language into action.” 

“So some of this isn’t what you would use for your normal magic?” Jane said. 

“It is too ancient. It requires too much power,” Loki said. “It would kill a sorcerer unaided.” 

“Humans can’t do this,” Jane said. 

“No,” Loki scoffed. “Not of their own power—only certain species are capable of even detecting, much less using what one would call magic. You can only convert words to numbers or symbols and use external power or objects to make equations into action.” 

“We have those,” Jane said. “You gave me a key. And we have huge sources of power. We can combat the Tesseract-“

“But not equal it,” Loki reminded her, almost taunting.

“Not yet,” Jane said. “Given time-“

“That you don’t have,” Loki interrupted. One of his hands smoothed the sheets of the bed he sat upon, like a reflex. “But you are intelligent, I must admit, to even begin to comprehend what I have told you. This is your life work, this science?” 

“Yes,” Jane said. “Discovering new things, finding out how they work. Creating new technology.” 

Loki looked incredulous. “And does Thor understand?” 

Jane was surprised to hear Thor brought up. “No. But he listens to me talk through it. He appreciates my passion, even if he can’t understand it.” 

“Really,” Loki said, his expression twitching. “Does it not bother you, that he can’t understand?” 

Jane shook her head. “Most people can’t. But I know enough who do.” 

Loki glanced away. 

“Thor said magic is like science,” Jane added. 

“Did he,” Loki muttered. “How astute of him.” 

“Stark and I might be able to work with you here,” Jane said. “I’m sure you heard about your options.” 

“Options,” Loki repeated, sounding hollow. 

“Listen,” said Jane, “I get the impression that a lot of people in Asgard don’t get magic. I’m not saying we do, but Stark and I are intelligent in the same way as you are. Banner, too. And we’re interested. You might, I don’t know, enjoy the company.” 

“Of enemies?” 

“This is your chance to not be the enemy,” Jane said. “As colleagues. Peers.” Loki didn’t answer. She added, for the sake of breaking the awkward silence, “You’re doing a lot better. Quick recovery?” 

Loki’s expression was blank as he looked at her. “I saw so much that I could not comprehend seeing for so little. It is still strange, but less so.” 

Jane nodded. “But aside from being fatigued, you’re better?” 

“No.” Loki gestured to the notebook. “It’s in my head. The knowledge. The urges. The visions. When I sleep—“ He cut himself off. “The possibilities.” 

“Possibilities?” Jane repeated. 

“The life I would rather live,” Loki sighed. 

“You could change the past,” Jane said. 

Loki smirked. “I could see the other pasts, presents, and futures,” he said, and Jane swallowed hard as the words hit her. “I could change time and so much more. You did not think the Tesseract was capable, but it is. I was.” 

Jane’s head spun with thoughts of changing the past, of other universes that Loki must have seen, of the damage he could have done with no one knowing it, of the changes he could have made, the creations— “Why?” She stopped. She had almost asked why he had let go. She knew why. 

And yet…

Curiosity would be her downfall. 

She couldn’t imagine the feeling of all that, added with the power to manipulate it, to actually see it, to do. 

She re-focused on Loki. He seemed lost in thought, smirk gone, face a little too pale. 

Jane had what she came for. It wasn’t this. “You know what you have to do,” she said, forcing herself into the present. “This is an offer. So.” She stood up, holding the notebook tight, and left the room. 

**

Natasha watched Jane and Stark pour over the new information Loki had given Jane earlier in the day. They seemed to have forgotten the past weeks of too much work and too little rest as they extracted the writing in the little notebook. 

Natasha wanted such a distraction. 

A question weighed heavily on her mind, had been, but she had been dismissing it. Would she truly refuse a change of her past? For all she had denied it, had insisted it was part of her, there were times when she wanted that very thing. If she had taken the Tesseract, used it, would she have kept her life the same?

And she knew—she knew that Loki had been on the edge of this decision, why he had asked her and not another. She had the most blood to her name. At his heart, he had taken the Tesseract for that one very personal reason. For all his grand actions and threats, Loki’s motivation came down to something so personal. 

Got you, Natasha thought, but she didn’t feel satisfied. She felt angry. Because this situation had gotten under her skin—her mind had made it about her life and not Loki’s, all because Loki had been using her, using her past, her weaknesses. 

And yet, Loki had made a choice. He had let go of the Tesseract, of its power, and had not changed her past, or his. 

Which meant something. Loki wanted to move forward. 

And emotionally, he was vulnerable. At the cusp of a second decision. 

It would benefit the Avengers—hell, the world—if Loki decided to move forward, away from his rage and self-loathing and hatred of those who had hurt him, away from revenge. To be better than them, and better than he himself had been. 

A small part of her, to her disbelief, wanted Loki to do this for his own sake, because she had been in that position once, and she had made that choice, and she did not forgive or forget those who had helped form her into the thing she hated. She could move on, make herself something better in spite of them. And perhaps Loki could too. 

She could only prod him forward. She knew Loki would be the one to make the choice. She wouldn’t deny him that, she resolved now, despite the potential consequences. She had been around long enough, had manipulated enough people to understand when someone needed autonomy. 

She would wait a few days. And then she would talk to him. Tell him that it was his choice, forget the threat of Asgard and death and SHIELD. To make the choice as if none of that mattered. 

He could decide to make everything burn. 

Natasha did not have faith in him, nor did she feel despair that he would make the choice that would harm them all. She only knew that she had been given this choice once, at great risk to others, and now, for herself, she needed to be able to give that choice to someone else, to know that she could. 

A few days later she made her visit.


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the end! Thank you to everyone who's read, kudo'd, reviewed, ect. I hope you've enjoyed it!

By the time Natasha got to Loki’s room, he wasn’t there. She asked Jarvis, who informed her that Loki was with Jane and Stark in the lab. 

Natasha sat down in one of the chairs and waited. She didn’t want to take Loki away from the very thing they had wanted to push him towards. She imagined a lot of insults passed between Loki and the scientists, masking compliments and grudging admiration on both sides. 

It could work. 

She took out her phone and began going through messages. A lot were unimportant, sent to the whole of SHIELD. A few were meant exclusively for her—Coulson sent a message to ask her about a possible mission in northern China next month. Fury wanted updated assessments on the Avengers as a matter of keeping track of how the team were doing, if they could benefit from additional members or if it was best to leave them alone. She had only ever evaluated Stark, so she would be starting from scratch on everyone else. 

It would take time that she wouldn’t have if she went on the China mission. She planned to ask Clint if he could do it. 

About an hour later Loki came into the room, paused by the door and then turned to see Natasha, who smiled at him from her place near the bed. Loki seemed well. Not better, but well. 

“I heard you’ve been helping Jane and Stark,” she said. 

“It is more interesting than sitting in this room,” Loki replied, but the way he said it suggested that this was not his only feeling on the matter. 

“Well, you could just leave,” Natasha said. “Nothing’s keeping you here. You’re healing. I’m assuming your magic is back—“

“You know what keeps me here,” Loki cut in. “If I leave, I will be taken back to Asgard and put to death.” 

Natasha nodded. “True. That’s what Odin said.” She gestured to the bed. Loki eyed her warily but crossed the room and sat down. “What do you really want?” 

Loki scoffed. “So you can prevent me from having it?” 

“No,” Natasha said, allowing Loki to look into his eyes, dissect her if he must. 

Loki frowned, having not found the lie. He looked away. “Why?” 

“Look,” said Natasha, “forget Odin, or SHIELD, or the Avengers or Thor. Imagine, for a moment, that none of that mattered. What would you do?” 

Loki’s jaw clenched and he swallowed. After a few moments he looked at Natasha. “I would leave,” he said. 

“And?” 

“Does it matter?” 

“A bit,” Natasha said. 

“Can you trust me?” Loki asked, lowering his voice. “Would you be able to trust me if I left and did not tell you what I meant to do? I could steal the Tesseract, kill Thor, wage war on this planet, but you would not know until it happened.” 

“Would you?” Natasha asked. 

Loki gave her a hollow smile. “I make no promises.” 

Natasha sighed. She tried to remember that she wanted—needed—to give Loki this choice. “I can’t trust you,” she said. 

“Ah,” was the only response. 

“But,” Natasha continued, “I can still let you make your own choice, if you wanted to.” 

“They would know,” Loki said. “My choice would be neither of the options laid out for me.” 

“Thor mentioned you could hide yourself from your gatekeeper, right?” Natasha said, and Loki nodded. “Well, do that. I’ll do damage control here, and you can get a head-start. Just don’t tell us when you’re leaving.” 

“Why?” Loki asked. 

“I got a second chance once,” Natasha said. 

“I make no promises,” Loki repeated. 

“Didn’t expect you to,” Natasha said. “I might regret it, but really, it’s in your hands now.” 

Loki watched her, having gone still. “You’re serious,” he said. 

Natasha nodded. 

“I will not take the Tesseract,” Loki said after a moment. “It will kill me. I will not try to rule your world. I can’t promise anything more. Thor—“ He swallowed. “I don’t know. Other crimes, fights, fits of rage. I am not sure. I still have anger but perhaps,” he laughed softly, “I need not be a complete monster.” 

You don’t need to be a monster at all, Natasha thought, but she said nothing. It wouldn’t help. 

“We’ll see,” Loki added. He leaned forward. “I could have been the worst horror of the universe. I was never the best of them.” 

“You don’t have to be,” Natasha said. “Only satisfied with yourself. Do you think any of your other selves were?” 

“I don’t know,” Loki said. “They were not what I wanted from my life.” His eyes settled upon her. “But you are—you took me out of myself and put me in the present, made me see. You could have let me die.” 

“You might have done worse than die,” Natasha reminded him. 

Loki stood, unfolding himself from the bed. “Will you regret it?” he asked. 

“I hope not.” 

Loki vanished. 

Natasha felt, at first, the oh-shit instinct to raise the alarm and send everyone after Loki. But after a moment she settled back down into her chair, relaxed, and smiled a small smile to herself. 

**

Loki did not appear on SHIELD’s radar for months. The Avengers played at being angry, but were relieved. Thor was relieved too, if a bit sad. If everyone was a bit on edge for the first month, no one mentioned why. They tried to let Loki slip out of their lives quietly, pretending it was nothing of consequence until finally, it wasn’t. 

In fact, Natasha had been on several missions and had all but stopped thinking about it when, one night, as she was looking through reports on her computer in her room at Stark Tower, she felt like something else was with her. She had, over the years, learned to trust this instinct, so she stood and turned, one hand on her gun that she kept on her person. 

Loki stood there, grinning slightly. He was dressed in his leathers, razor-sharp and a bit disheveled and tired. He held up his hands to show they were empty of weapons. 

“You,” Natasha said. “It’s been months.” She wasn’t angry, just curious. 

“I know,” Loki said. “I’ve been traveling.” 

“Just traveling?” 

Loki laughed, a genuine laugh born of humor. “Perhaps I have run into trouble, but nothing world ending, I assure you.” 

“You look like crap,” Natasha pointed out. 

“I may be running from some dark elves,” Loki said, “but they will not be able to find me for a few days.” 

“You talk to Thor?” Natasha asked. 

That put a small dent in Loki’s good mood, but he brushed it off and said, “It has not been the time.” 

Natasha nodded. “So why are you here?” 

“I left without a proper parting,” Loki told her. “I would remedy that now, if you let me.” He took a step forward, nearly closing the gap between them. 

Natasha let her gun drop onto the bed, still within easy reach. “You don’t need to say goodbye,” she said. “I knew you’d leave without telling anyone.” 

“I need to say thank you,” Loki said, and he leaned forward and placed a kiss on Natasha’s lips. Natasha let him, then pulled him closer and deepened the kiss, her own way of showing that she didn’t regret the decision she made. She bit Loki’s lip and felt his mouth twitch into a smirk and she pulled away. 

“Don’t get yourself killed,” she murmured. 

Loki’s answering grin was a little wild, a little care-free, but absent of the anger and self-hatred that so often seemed to plague him. Natasha felt that, now, she was seeing Loki for who he really wanted to be, and even if he was not completely there yet, comfortable in his own skin, he was closer. It made Natasha feel a bit warm. 

Then Loki pressed a light, playful kiss to her lips and disappeared, and Natasha returned to her reports with a smile upon her lips. 

The future was not certain, but she did not look at it with dread, only curiosity and a mindset that would embrace whatever was to come.


End file.
